Anna is a young nun in the 1960s who is being pursued by an agent in the Polish secret service aiming to recruit her as an informer. He reveals her Jewish heritage, which makes her question her own identity, as their relationship grows more complicated. Anna also discovers an aunt she never knew, who was once a notorious Stalinist judge. Together they set out to uncover the truth about Anna's parents, murdered by Poles in a 1942 pogrom.
Bartek Staszczysyzn, writing for culture.pl, says that Sister of Mercy is not a historical film, it is a story about a human, "Many things will surprise the viewer", he adds. The novelist Cezary Harasimowicz, who co-wrote the script, told Artur Cichmiński of Stopklatka, "This is not easy, simple, and it does not aim to settle accounts. [...] But what I sure of is that it will touch important and sensitive issues".
"I care about universal affairs, about the timeless conflict", Pawlikowski told Janusz Wróblewski from Polityka magazine. "I am interested in different types of faiths, discovering erotic life, links with family, identity issues. That’s what Sister of Mercy is about. And in that sense it could take place anywhere else in Europe."
The project for Sister of Mercy was awarded the MEDIA prize in 2010 for European Talent within the European Union Media programme. Presented during the Cannes Festival by Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Culture and Education, the prize rewards "work of great quality and strong European potential". Faced with his wife's illness and death, the director delayed work on the film. "The first version of the script was written four years ago", he said in the Polityka interview, "but I stop liking it quickly. I lost faith in the text. Then I thoroughly revised it."
For Sister of Mercy, a Polish-British coproduction, Pawlikowski decided to film in Poland for the first time. Cinematography is by Ryszard Lenczewski, who shot the director's features The Last Resort, My Summer of Love and The Woman in the Fifth. The cast includes Agata Kulesza, Joanna Kulig, the newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska, and Dawid Ogrodnik who acted in Leszek Dawid’s You Are God.
Pawel Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw in 1957, then left as a 14-year-old for the U.K. Acclaimed by the BBC as "one of Britain's leading filmmakers", Pawlikowski said in an Arts Desk piece by Nick Hasted that he "could have become more British - I feel vaguely British. I’ve lived in Germany, Italy, my wife was Russian. [...] So I seem to like being on the margin, in every way, even filming." He began his career making documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, and his debut, From Moscow to Pietushki, received an Emmy and a Prix Italia. For The Last Resort, the director's first feature, he received the Michael Powell Award and was named BAFTA’s Most Promising Newcomer. My Summer of Love brought him another BAFTA Best Film Award, as well as the 2004 Edinburgh International Film Festival Best Film Award. The Woman in the Fifth from 2011, a thriller with a psychological edge, is also a multifaceted story with mysterious characters coming together in a motel on the outskirts of Paris.
Future projects include an English-language feature, Epic, and a project in Georgian and Russian, a study of Josef Stalin's early career that is being rewritten by Ben Hopkins as The Revolution According to Kamo.
Sources: based on the text by Bartek Staszczyszyn for culture.pl, Cannes Film festival, Screendaily, Variety, Film New Europe
Editor: Marta Jazowska